Wikimedia CH/Information Technology Strategy/Directions

Welcome in this unstable "private draft"! Thank you for any early feedback!

Technological Directions

The followings are the Technological Directions of the Technology Strategy of Wikimedia CH.

The Directions explain long-term goals to a wide public, including but not limiting to current and future staff members, board members, contractors, and friendly newcomers.

Important: Recall that this is still a draft.

Thank you for any fix!

1. Technology as support for Free Knowledge

This point may seem trivial but it is really the first beacon that can illuminate Wikimedia CH in some crucial decision phases involving Technology.

Wikimedia CH has technological responsibilities and is committed to have a positive impact on Free Knowledge and Volunteers. Especially, the organization should not have a negative impact on local communities in Switzerland.

The organization must go for Technological choices that do not obstruct Free Knowledge in general. This also means the organization should sustain proactive projects to support Free Knowledge and Volunteers in general.

Practicals:

✅ Our main stakeholders are Wikimedia volunteers.

✅ Wikimedia CH should support technological initiatives that encourage the creation and dissemination of Free knowledge, especially on neutral and uncontroversial topics and especially when the community proposes privacy-friendly tools (like online events, tools, etc.)

✅ Wikimedia CH can just follow Wikipedia in most ethical principles. For example, in never requesting unnecessary data from volunteers (unless required by law, etc.), to both protect the participants and the organization itself.

✅ Wikimedia CH should be able to support technological needs by the local community, such as being able to help on broken community tools, or being able to help on community components that need a bit of professional maintenance (like wikis, bots, very advanced templates, etc.) or support bold ideas of interest to WMCH (as new prototypes to sustain a community need, etc.)

❌ We must not support technological initiatives designed to push content that is incompatible with Wikipedia, in Wikipedia, etc. - legally, or technically. We must not support technological initiatives that encourage the infringement of the copyrights of volunteers, or who sabotage their credits, etc.

Context:

Movement Strategy/Recommendations/Innovate in Free Knowledge

Movement Strategy/Recommendations/Identify Topics for Impact

Movement Strategy/Recommendations/Coordinate Across Stakeholders

2. In Wikimedia, the User is never the Product

In Wikimedia we love to use technology, without being used and controlled by it.

Whereas a volunteer or a staff member may very well decide to use whatever tool in private; when we communicate and collaborate in the public, we need additional efforts to maximize neutrality and reduce outside interests over users and their data. Most popular technology has important conflicts of interest. These potential conflicts can be declared, to be discussed, and reduce their impact.

A tool can be controversial when the behind company is multi-national, focused on user-tracking for advertising purposes. It is particularly controversial, especially when normal people can confuse a company as an official Wikimedia partner.

Protecting volunteers from these risk is challenging for a wide range of technology consumers. Wikimedia CH and advisory committees should be enabled for this kind of professional help.

Practicals:

✅ When evaluating software or services, ethical concerns (like license terms) must be considered.

✅ Sometime, a 100% Free, Open, Ideal, Ethical, independent solution is an utopia. In these cases, it's still important to discuss problems, openly, with a positive collaborative approach, without bias, to help others in a similar position to understand desired workflows and current limitations in Open solutions.

✅ If we invest on a non-Open solution, we can dedicate resources for on a Open solution in long-terms. That is the bold creative space where the Wikimedia movement has always had a big impact on the world.

✅ Wikimedia Foundation is a good partner and we have other good ethical partners. They don't resell user interests to private advertisers, they sustain strong privacy / anonymity etc., they are nonprofit organizations with core interest in Free knowledge.

✅ An event may require for some reasons to have an email or a phone number or similar neutral and standard technologies.

✅ We take care that proposed software solutions carefully protect data of volunteers and donors (inspecting terms of service, etc.)

❌ It is important not to advertise a specific email vendor or a specific phone number vendor etc. since we are not here to take volunteers and turn them into customers of a specific service provider.

❌ Just to avoid doubts about this direction: volunteers must be able to join the Wikimedia movement without the requirement to be a particular customer - for example - without the need to be a customer of Google, of Microsoft, of Apple, of Amazon, of Facebook/Meta, of Twitter, etc. Premising we are grateful to every piece of Internet that helps in connecting Wikipedia to billions of people; we are committed to reduce misleading similarities and proximity between the goals of Wikimedia projects and conflicts of interests of private companies.

❌ Some organizations promote specific services only if the related company is a clear official sponsor of some kind. While this sometime has sense, looking for official sponsorship could be even worse in some other cases. Sometime, a clear separation is just the best solution.

Context:

Movement Strategy/Recommendations/Provide for Safety and Inclusion

Movement Strategy/Recommendations/Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement

3. People creates services. IT processes support people.

Information technology supports people to help them to create great services. If people avoid tools and processes of the information technology, there is to investigate the reason because the technolgy can help them to imrpove their work.

The IT services must assure a realiability and an availability to mantain safe and efficient the whole organization, starting from volunteers and arriving to the staff.

Context:

Movement Strategy/Recommendations/Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement

Movement Strategy/Recommendations/Improve User Experience

4. Managing Risks to increase Security

Information technology is a critical aspect in any organization because it affects daily work, from tools to IT equipment.

A security issue or a data breach are big risks for any organization. The IT can monitor and manage the systems security to prevent and mitigate risks. Premising that security is a larger field where the IT is just a part of it.

Documenting the components of the IT Infrastructure, tools, servers, access levels, and have procedures, help in mitigating the risks, and be ready when needed.

Context:

Movement Strategy/Recommendations/Invest in Skills and Leadership Development

5. We communicate with Open Standards

Often, we land in a different nation and we are disoriented by the different type of electrical outlets of our devices. This is something we remember as we travel, and then we forget.

The point is: fortunately, there are standards, and they are few, and they prevent the proliferation of many other practices.

The organization is committed to adopt Open Standards, especially those oriented towards re-adapting a material; thus we avoid read-only formats.

In addition, the use of open standards helps the integration of different systems. Open standards are well documented, well-known and reduce the risks to be dependent and locked on a single specific company.

Practicals:

✅ Internally we may sometime work on closed formats, but in the public we must prefer Free File Formats accepted by Wikimedia Commons

✅ When a format is not available for Wikimedia Commons, when like to create documents in Open Formats such as ODT, ODF, ODP, PDF etc. and the List of open file formats.

❌ We avoid to release a document just as read-only. For example, we avoid to release something just in PDF, since it does not encourage to adapt that document or fix mistakes. The original file can be published in other ways, like Wikimedia Phabricator File Drop, Internet Archive, wikimedia.ch, etc.

❌ We avoid to share files only using the historical Microsoft DOC/DOCX default format. This could create problems with Wikimedia Commons, but also with the LibreOffice community, who reverse engineered that format for years, coming to the conclusion that it cannot be "a standard". Better to "Export as ODT" and also as PDF. Directly collaborating on a wiki is also a possibility that doesn't necessarily have to be encouraged, but should not be discouraged since it's a technical tool that legally enables collaboration, has a history of contributions, already has an author credit, and (with all the limitations) already generates a fairly interoperable format.

Movement Strategy/Recommendations/Invest in Skills and Leadership Development

Movement Strategy/Recommendations/Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement

Movement Strategy/Recommendations/Manage Internal Knowledge

6. Technology respects Environmental Resources

As repeated also by authoritative local sources in Switzerland and by international frameworks, humanity must mitigate Climate Change manage with everyday concrete individual actions, as well as with long-term plans.

Along with many other disastrous risks to humanity, Climate Change is one of the prominent ones that will lead humanity to fight for basic resources. In short, Climate Change will impose a change in human priorities, to put survival of humanity at any cost, even at the expense of Free Knowledge, even at the expense of archives, libraries, museums and places of science preservation.

Practicals:

✅ Technological choices must consider the minimization of waste of resources such as mineral resources, water resources, energy resources; to minimize other waste directly related to these.

✅ We try to study software that could aggressively consumes computer resources (such as CPU utilization) without any clearly constructive purpose.

✅ We try to identify if a software has internal behavior or strong trade secret protection mechanisms that prevent independent researchers from studying its environmental impact.

✅ We support software designed to respect and optimize hardware resources of a computer with maximum efficiency, and these solutions should be preferred.

✅ We are committed to review our service providers in order to ask for a positive energy impact.

❌ We discourage waste of hardware resources, such as consumption of technology that does not legally or technically allow repair.

❌ We try to avoid unsustainable software projects such as "computer mining" activities. They are essentially a waste of finite energy to create a profit for those who consumes most electrical energy for computer computation; energy that could be used for other scientific purposes.

❌ We discourage consumption of disposable technology. For example, badges in pure aluminum found on clothes in some stores, designed to be thrown away immediately after the article is purchased.

Context:

Movement Strategy/Recommendations/Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement

7. Technology for Open Decisions and Safe Spaces

Sometime on the Internet or on the television it seems there is a fast track for junk information or disrespectful behavior.

The good thing is that the majority of people do not make this use of the Internet, however, a minority can be quite effective in generating a majority of cases.

The direction is to use technology in a way that encourages a Safe Space for collaboration. By Safe Space we mean a place where it is possible to discuss a topic in a gentle way and with proactive proposals, avoiding unrelated negative comment about persons (avoiding flames, etc.). Wikipedia is an example where a single anonymous IP address can add a reference and enhance an important article, if the user does so constructively.

Creative spaces should be protected from trolls, but still open from useful feedback. We promote friendly environments where there is room to open discussion, there is room to understand each other, there is room to say thank you, and room to forgive each other.

Practicals:

✅ We use technology in a responsible way, assuming that everything we write or say can honestly be saved somewhere forever and that a bad comment sometimes sticks around for a long time. One more reason to be kind.

✅ It is especially important to be careful when we process personal data. Note: a person's real name, or link to their nickname can also be a personal data. Sometimes, to protect volunteers, it's best not to ask for data unnecessarily.

✅ Technology should be used in a way to help newcomers to understand what is the most appropriate collaborative style, and what are the rules for living together. In short: be nice.

✅ We clean our personal devices so that outdated and potentially privacy threatening information is deleted

✅ For example, the Universal Code of Conduct is a great tool that should be linked, explained and discussed to newcomers and new staff members etc.

✅ It really helps to assume that the person in front of you has experience and is right, to be able to understand the opinion of others without preconceptions. This avoids so much frictions.

✅ To support the decisions of Board and the Staff, we support a Technical advisory committee.

❌ If we spend most of our time using a technology to criticize other volunteers instead of thanking them for the good parts, there could be a big problem.

❌ Sometimes it is not possible to stop a behavior. For example, an unpleasant comment from an anonymous user on a social can be difficult to be stopped quickly. So, it's also important to distance ourselves publicly from bad behaviors, to better help any offended person not to feel alone.

❌ The goal is not to scold a person when a rule is not understood. The goal is to work on mutual help and empathy to advance Wikimedia Projects, taking the best of the different opinions.

❌ Questions such as "Was a technical committee involved? What was their opinion?" Should not be missing from written minutes of a meeting, about the adoption of an tool.

Context:

Movement Strategy/Recommendations/Ensure Equity in Decision-making

Movement Strategy/Recommendations/Provide for Safety and Inclusion

8. Public as Default

This dedicated section is needed because not everything is related to copyright. Some topics are not related to creativity rights, but are still related to approaches that should be public and open by default, as much as possible.

Some interesting reasons against a "private by default" strategies are: closing useful documents is a major barrier to Free knowledge but also to collaboration. Closing a "knowledge base" almost certainly destine it for rapid obsolescence. Closing "internal guidelines" often enforces negative gatekeeping principles, and so on.

It can happen to start a documentation about a technology (think about a user manual of a tool) and then it can happen to complain that nobody updates that manual again. When that happens, probably it means: it should be more easy to find documents, and it should be more easy to edit them.

Another interesting facet: sometime we like to use chats, and private email messaging etc., but when most decisions are held in private places, it's difficult that other people could ever understand something in our processes. This is also a problem from a communication point of view, if from the outside of the organization it seems that the staff is not porous with the board, or with the outside world. This may be not a current problem in our organization, but it's a frequent Wikimedia stereotype and it deserves our attention.

Premising that Wikimedia CH is a very fortunate chapter that works mostly remotely, so these steps might be more intuitive than for other organizations.

Practicals:

✅ There are good reasons to keep stuff private, but these reasons deserve a strong and clear explanation, since private documents are usually useful to be archived, not to collaborate on them.

✅ Having public discussions on general topics is a good general direction. This does not mean making everyone talk over us. This just mean: we want to allow other people to (at minimum) be curious and listen. Otherwise, we can hardly receive positive constructive feedback in time.

✅ Good reasons for closing an information: legal problems, problems with protecting a personal data, etc.

❌ Bad reasons for closing an information: afraid of feedback, afraid of looking bad, afraid of sharing a draft. Wikipedia is a good example of an incomplete project that was never designed to be published only when completed.

✅ We do our best to design a safe infrastructure, by design, and not by obscuring its components. We really believe in the Kerckhoffs's principle and in the Claude Shannon's maxim: "one ought to design systems under the assumption that the enemy will immediately gain full familiarity with them". We document our knowledge in public places. We enable an open discussion over our procedures, since we are surrounded by well-intentioned volunteers who may have more expertise than we do on how to correct a problem.

✅ We do our best to keep also technical documentation as much public as possible (for example, how our websites work, etc.) since this is the main way to avoid gatekeeping, info obsolescence, and mitigate maintenance and protection issues. This is also the only way we can enable collaboration to new technical talented contributors.

✅ Most of the technical infrastructure of WMCH heavily relies on famous, stable, widely adopted Open Source software that have public documentation and public configuration notes. The hope is that our public documentation can help others, and can reduce frictions, costs and dependencies.

✅ We are totally grateful to those who report security issues in an ethical and responsible way.

✅ We believe in the Linus's law. We encourage a public discussion over our public procedures.

❌ One person should not get caught up in the fashion of "publishing everything" if one is unable to distinguish what is personal data to be protected, and what is not, etc.

❌ One person should not get caught up in the fashion of "publishing everything" if one is unable to distinguish what is personal data to be protected, and what is not, etc.

❌ A climate of hiding problems can cause a feeling of false security with potential damage to the organization.

❌ We don't believe in obsolete Security through obscurity stereotypes. We don't hide keys under a secret doormat.

❌ It is no fun to report a security problem to possible attackers, and then last to report it to those affected. We appreciate those who report security issues to administrators first and responsibly, in order to collaborate on security fix proposals, to then be able to publish the original problem to help similar parties. Wikimedia CH has yet to study a thank-you program, but we will certainly take care of reports from responsible security experts, with respect and full thanks for your help in the Wikimedia Movement.

Context:

Movement Strategy/Recommendations/Manage Internal Knowledge

Movement Strategy/Recommendations/Ensure Equity in Decision-making